
I surgically removed core very quickly with my squads before the doom squads got out of hand. In my most recent expert run, where I had everyone go neutral, I lost only 1 allied commander during the entire fights against core and carminia and it was only due to carminia's insta kill. Yes, you will lose at least 1 commander to carminia's insta kill move but again, I've found overall that if you equipped your heroes out well they steamroll the early game giving you breathing room while you run around assassinating heroes and capitals.

On the contrary, if you equipped and maxed out your allied heroes from all the other missions, they are a huge benefit to containing the map and defeating enemy commanders, yes on expert mode. Constant waves of autonom murderbots aren't, and as CORE runs out of targets other than you over time you'll be facing them from all directions at once in an unending stream.

The Empress' void attack is survivable in the long run for a decent player. Oh, and if you go neutral, focus on taking out CORE's side first. I managed to keep one ally alive by gifting her a city completely surrounded by my own territory when she was reduced to a single commander and a few outposts. Neutrals get hit by both and will thus probably be gone before turn 50.

CORE-aligned ones get their capitals nuked by the empress which they can't really recover from, while Carminia's followers die like flies to CORE's autonom doomstacks. Originally posted by MattStriker:Don't expect your AI allies to be any help at all in the last mission.
